Program increment (PI) objectives are summaries of business and technical goals at multiple levels within a program increment. In the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) there are two levels of PI objectives. Team PI objectives reflect the summary of the specific business and technical goals that have been planned during release planning. Program PI Objectives are at a higher level of abstraction, reflecting the summary of the teams PI objectives to describe the overall program increment. The process of generating the PI objectives serves three primary purposes. They are to:

Create alignment. Teams in the ART synthesize the visions (business context, product and architecture visions) presented at the beginning of the planning event along with the prioritized backlog to generate business and technical stories which are then planned. Stories and spikes are added and planned by the team until they reach capacity. When process of planning is complete the work that has been planned is summarized into the team PI objectives. PI objectives are communication vehicles for the team to share what they are doing to those outside the team and for other teams and stakeholders (those outside the team boundary) to consume and understand. The PI objectives are a stand in for a laundry list user stories that allows all of the ART teams to compare objectives. The comparison process helps to ensure teams are aligned so that the program increment vision can be delivered. Program PI objectives are generated by synthesizing the teams PI objectives into program PI objectives. Program PI objectives are another tool to ensure all of the teams are aligned.

Generate agreement of feasibility. The process of synthesizing the stories into team PI objectives and then from team PI objectives into program PI objectives is a mechanism to communicate what each team believes feasible in the program increment time frame. As team-level PI objectives are communicated and synthesized into program PI objectives, the ART has another opportunity to expose dependencies or to ensure that dependencies are understood.

Set Expectations. PI objectives, whether at the team or program level, are commitments to perform. PI objectives can be thought of as line in the sand based on plans generated by the teams that are committed to doing the work (rather than plans and objectives made for the teams).

The release planning process is a mechanism for teams to plan the work they are going to do in a program increment. PI objectives are a mechanism to summarize the detail that planning creates so that everyone involved in the Agile release train can agree upon what will be delivered. At the end of a program increment those involved in the increment can reflect on the objectives both at a program and team level and use what was learned to continuously improve.

[…] whole rather than a team or small group of teams. Scaled Agile Framework Enterprise (SAFe) program increments are no different. Program increments are similar to a large Scrum sprint beginning with planning […]